1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk array system, and particularly to a technique effectively applied to a disk array system where a plurality of disk components are connected by looped communication means such as a Fibre Channel loop and to a fault-tolerant control method for such a disk array system.
2. Description of Related Art
As an ultra high-speed gigabit network technology, there is known Fibre Channel standardized by ANSI NCITS T11 (formerly ANSI X3 T11). Utilization of such a Fibre Channel (FC) loop (hereinafter referred to as “FC loop”) enables to build a large-scale storage system, i.e., a disk array system, where a plurality of hard disk units is connected.
On the other hand, a disk drive unit which performs read/write operations via serial interface, i.e., SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) drive, has been devised recently.
Patent document 1 discloses an information processing system employing SATA drives.
Patent Document 1: U.S. patent application Publication No. 2003/0135577